Sometimes you have an image that you do some digital editing on and the result just isn't what you had in mind ..... and then after a few more goes you stand back and think "yes that is it !" ...well I thought I would share one such image with you here.
The image is of a couples pre-wedding photoshoot. The location was almost perfect for the shot a large conservatory with diffusing blinds in the roof, and a large open expanse behind the couple to throw everything out of focus a long with stronger lighting to get an added burn/bleach out effect.
The shots was taken with a Phase One P20 Plus Digital Back, hence the lovely square format at about F3.5 with a large reflector bouncing in light from the roof to the couples right. (Thanks Warren for assisting with this one.
The first edit was to black & white, there are lots of ways to do this, but I use a great action in PhotoShop from Photo Wiz called "BW Styler" which I love because it is based on producing the result that would have been obtain with film and many hours in the darkroom.
For the first edit I soften the image and reduce some contrast it looked like a film scan and I was happyish with the result, but somehow it wasn't there, I knew the couple liked sepia toned images so I thought applying subtle toning would be the finishing touch. But as I know sepia toning works better with a more contrast image and I was right the toning did nothing to add to the image. So started again to do another edit and got a little side tracked by thinking that the colour image would suit cross processing, they both had blue jeans on and with low contrast and high key lighting that 1970's fashion look can work well .... it did ...but of cause that wasn't what I wanted in the first place ...so back to Plan A. The Cross Processing was another PS Action and had given far more punch to certain details in the image especially the couples eyes, and the skin tone was now more magenta ...so taking this image into b&w gave a very different result to my first softer image, but now anything was too hard. What better opportunity than the merge the soft and harsh b&w to create balance and it worked well .... finally toning ... for both this and the the cross processing I used another set of actions from Iridius and in the toning pallet are two on my favourites "gold" and "silver gelatin" I used a blend of both of these to get the toning I wanted. As you can see I also removed the distraction in the background (the bar) with a white brush ... job done. The final result would really print well as a metallic print.
The original image:
First b&w edit(soft):
Cross processed & to b&w:
Large below - Final b&w (merged soft and hard b&w images.Labels: marc byram photography tips how to tone an image black and white bw sepia potriature couple pre-weddin
Large below - Final b&w (merged soft and hard b&w images.